I became a writer because I loved to write. When I was a kid I loved to sit in my room alone and write stories. Loved to write in my head and figure out cool ways to describe the minutiae of my daily existence. Loved writing letters to friends, even ones who lived across the street. Loved the essay tests that other kids hated. When I got to college I realized people who mattered thought I was a good writer. And I figured out that newspaper writers got to write about lots of different stuff. If I became I journalist I wouldn’t have to choose just one of my passions. Theater, science, pop culture, music, politics, books – if I wrote for newspapers I could be part of all those worlds, not just one. But after 35 year of writing about those things I realize that I have never been part of those worlds at all; I have merely observed them from arm’s-length. I have studied postcards of exotic cities but have never walked their streets, have peered through windows at parties I longed to attend. And because I freelance, and work at home, I am not even a part of the journalism world. Journalism has given me a Prufrockian life, devoid of consequence, and at age 60 I’m probably not going to change it. But the worst thing is that the grind of writing on deadline every day for decades has led me to despise writing. What had been my liberating joy is now the most onerous of chores.
I am a freelance writer. It is the most profound regret of my life.
They were people whose lives were slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days, until they were absorbed into oblivion.
-Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
as your life,
but you can
never wholly know it.
